Daily Yellowstone journal., 1887-02-01
plcruaesoueNess or THE NtvA.
Beauty and Purity OF the Russian River.
A Break Up In the Spring.

beauty and Purity Of the Russian River.
A Break Up In the Spring.
A mere neck Of earth separates the
Russian capital from the great inland sea
of Ladoga, and through more than forty
intervening versts Of forest land, green
and wavy with the trembling aspen, the
birch, the alder and the silver pine, the
Neva moves majestically down its deep
channel, by villages and clearings, past
scattered communes and struggling huts,
between sounding w~oodyards and busy
factories, till at last, gliding along the
famed granite quays of the imperial city,
II pours by five broad mouths and narrow
outlets innumerable into the Gulf Of Fin
land.
No Russian river has the beauty, the
purity, the picturesqueness, which are
the attributes of this northern water
course: yet to fully appreciate the noble
ness of its aspect in the warm season one
must be familiar with its wintry appear
ance and, above all, witness its vernal
emancipation from the letters Of frost by
ukase of the father of warmth" the
Slav Apollo, Dazh Bog himself. For
nearly six months a ringing highway for
man and beast, the Neva grows unsafe
for travel late in the month of April and
has usually resumed its freedom by the
beginning Of May; yet the opening of the
attack on the crystalline mass precedes
the moment Of its melting by weeks. A
month sometimes elapses before the solar
rays have begun to sensibly thin the ice
crust, and for a month Of seeming def
ance of the forces Of renaissance, droskies
pursue their chosen paths over the con-
gealcd river, pedestrians continue to
traverse it in chair slides or on foot, the
heavy wagons Of merchant and trader &c
rumbling over in the endless procession,
and the Samoyeds, those gypsies of the
north. cling with their reindeers to the
camping ground of their winter exile on
the frozen stream. which is soon to bear
them back to their homes in the Arctic
circle.
The metamorphosis then follows with a
swiftness truly Russian. The last screws
and clasps Of molecular cohesion are
drawn in a single night; the thickest ice
plate then opens to its solar enemy q
thousand lines Of march. In the morn
ing, with firm, quick steps, you may
safely traverse the Neva, still ice covered;
at noon, your return is barred by q clear,
swelling stream, whose whilom bonds
have turned To dancing liquid facets. from
which the sun laughs back its light and
its triumph. True, the ice is not yet
wholly gone, but it meets the eye hence
forth purely as q spectacle-the offering,
not of a river, but Of q lake. This new
ice is the product of more northern waters,
the snowy blocks and bergs of Ladoga,
glittering debris of an unequal combat that
every spring renews.
For some DAYS after the break up along
the Neva, in the interval between the
beginning Of open and that of safe naviga-
ton. the river channel is thropged with
broken strata. cleft blocks, truncated pill
lars, shivered columns; with spires and
spears and shafts; nay, with all shapeful
and shapeleSs masses, that half undergo
and half escape degelation in the annual
return of heat to the far north. Slowly
the rank and file of this shining host glide
past, driving back to shelter a fleet Of
venturesome ferry boats, battering the
bridge piers with dangerous force and
frequency, scraping the quays with a SON.
orous attrition, and emitting throughout
tho duration of their passage a strange.
rustling, c~runching sound. BY day strik-
ing. by night solemn and weird. this scene
passes in its turn, and for six months the
Neva presents the aspect which | have
described in the opening paragraph
Atlantic Monthly.